6 Different Types of Marketing
Marketing is a huge, complicated, and ever-changing field. Since the rise of the internet, many more types of marketing have been born in order to keep up with its complexity and constantly evolving nature.
One thing remains constant about marketing though—the goal is always to sell a product or service and to increase your sales by building a brand and reaching new customers.
1. Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing focuses on getting customers to come to you through relevant and helpful content. It can be a great way to build long-term relationships with your customers, but it does require some effort.
Since the focus is on getting customers to come to you, the first step in inbound marketing is creating “landing pages” for your website that provide valuable information for your prospective buyers.
For example, if you are selling cars, you might include information about how frequently different car models typically need repairs or how much gas mileage they have.
The idea is to provide valuable information that will entice prospective buyers onto your site where they are more likely to become actual buyers.
In this way, inbound marketing helps prospects get to know, like, and trust you—all of which makes them more likely to buy from you!
2. Outbound Marketing
Outbound marketing is a type of marketing that involves a company reaching out to consumers. Outbound methods include face-to-face communication, print advertising, billboards, radio and television commercials, cold calls, and more.
Although there are many variations of this concept, all types of outbound marketing can be summarized in one word: interruption.
In order to get the attention of consumers with outbound methods, marketers must find ways to interrupt their lives and force brand messaging into their consciousness.
3. Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Word-of-mouth marketing is essentially what it sounds like. It happens when a customer talks to another person about your product or service and recommends it either face-to-face or online.
This could take the form of a phone call—where one friend is telling another about that really cool thing they bought on Amazon—or an IG post from your favorite influencer about how much they love the mascara you use.
Word-of-mouth marketing can be your best friend or worst enemy; it’s beyond your control, which means there’s little you can do to stop someone from hating on your brand and telling everyone how terrible it is.
This is also where a PR agency may come into significance for brands with a negative brand image.
But if you put effort into creating a fantastic product and providing great customer service, word-of-mouth marketing can help you build a loyal customer base who will continue buying from you again and again.
4. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a versatile, measurable, and cost-effective strategy. It can be used as part of a larger campaign or as its own go-to option.
The best email marketing campaigns are personalized and content-driven, so your customers will be more likely to engage with the material you send their way.
The average office worker receives about 120 emails every day (and most are the dreaded “reply all”), so you need to ensure that your emails stand out if you want them to be successful.
You also need to make sure that they’re timed correctly. No one wants an email at 3 AM!
5. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a brand rewards one or more affiliate partners for each purchase made by the customer who is referred by the affiliate partner.
Brands can use affiliate marketing to increase visibility with new audiences, build customer satisfaction, and increase revenue. Affiliate partners provide extended reach from their large audiences, often millions of users, and promote your products or services through websites, blogs, and social media posts.
When an audience member clicks on the affiliate link hosted on the affiliate partner’s website and proceeds to make a purchase or sign up for your service, that purchase will be tracked through a cookie placed in their web browser.
The affiliate partner will then receive a commission for directing you to this potential customer.
6. Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Marketing or SEM advertises websites through a visibility increase on search engines, primarily through paid advertising.
Most digital marketing agencies, if not all, have SEM in their strategies.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) are often confused with one another, but they are not the same.
SEO is an organic way to gain traffic through unpaid efforts, while SEM is a paid method of gaining traffic through ads. The main difference between the two methods lies in how you pay to use them:
- SEO uses unpaid or “organic” methods to increase website rankings and get traffic from search engines.
- SEM involves buying ad space through search engines, allowing you to buy your way to the top for terms related to your business.
Marketing is important for any business. Especially when it comes to business expansion, a brand should prioritize and explore different marketing strategies that will work for its target market.
This is also why brands may choose to hire or outsource a creative agency—to get the exposure and growth their business needs.
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